RECTANGULAR
Suddenly my head
feels Oh so rectangular
the Romantic poets
of my youth
gone
for good
and that Britain whose
shores my family shunned
when I was eleven
fades into the distance:
a freshly post-
imperial strange,
sad memory
just in time
to miss out on the Stones
and the Beatles
and every dear English
Summer of Love
but did
return for
the dour seventies and
punk deconstruction
my mastering
of Manchester in
my own
inimitably cock-
eyed way
and ducking out as
Mrs T swept
herself into power
our true
English Aphrodite motor
boating in with
new neo-liberal tide
and end
of society
wonder how that went
(smells even at this distance
so distinctly
born-again Nazi
can only imagine
how torturously writhing
poor Orwell in his grave).